“It’s not their fight, I cannot blame them,” I replied. “We have the foulings and colossi and the undead.”
“I know you have been doing something with the old magic,” he said. “I felt it all the way here. Do not overreach your magic, or no plan will work if you exhaust yourself.”
I turned to him, my eyes tracing the lines of his face, following the sheen of his skin as the sun lit it up. “You’ve followed me through everything so far; will you follow me through this?”
“You know I will,” he replied.
I pulled off a glove and touched his face, letting a finger trace his lips. “When it is all over, we have much to talk about. I don’t know if you’ll forgive me for what I have needed to do.”
“Survive,” he murmured. “That is all I need.”
I nodded.
“Lady!”
I turned; Tiri hurried to us from the old ruins. She had been outfitted with a leather jerkin and furs to keep her warm. She was now less a scribe and more a soldier. Behind her, I could see that the ruins had been built up with more stone and and wood, resembling less the home of the colossi and more the settlement at Winter’s Crown.
“Tiri,” I said.
“Your father will be so happy you’re back.” Then her face fell. “Is it soon, then? The battle?”
“It will be,” I replied. “Show me what has been done, and take me to my father.”
She nodded. With just a thought I sent my foulings off to search the mountains around Tal Anor. If the elves or humans could find a way in, they would let me know of it.
“We’ve done much,” Tiri said.
“I saw the back river wall.”
“That is more a precaution than anything, since it leads to Tal Aesiri. Most of our attention has been focused on the southern river exit, where it leads to the bay and to Tal Uil. Firien believes that he has seen scouts from Tal Uil, though most of the winter weather drove them off. We’ve been well-sheltered in here; it’s been much worse to the south.”
I nodded. “How are the food stores?”
“Lord Lorandal has helped there,” Tiri replied as we turned along the beach running along the town. My eyes darted to the fractured ward, but nobody had strayed near it. “He has ways of making seeds grow out of season, and through the tundra. And Lady Eliawen has shown us how to scavenge what is in the land already, and how to trap snow hares and lure seals. We’ve been careful, but haven’t starved. We’ve built up stores as well, in case there is a siege.”
Tiri didn’t seem to have any plans to leave. I was one for one now. “Has their been any discontent?”
“People have wondered where you’ve gone,” Tiri replied. “But most are glad to be out from Lady Ellsmid’s control.”
“We will keep them that way,” I said. They had kept the fire pits on the beach, and were curing seal and cooking fish. “Where is the lady elf?”
“With the prisoners—the elves Nogoriel and Rusindal. She is trying to persuade them to our side.”
I nodded. “Wood supplies?”
“Plenty, thanks to Lord Lorandal. A new tree seems to spring up the moment another is cut down.”
“And weaponry?”
“We, er, did have to tunnel into the mountains,” Tiri said apologetically. “The elves had some sort of magical trickery, and sought out iron ore. Iasul and Tunir were worried; they think that some sort of spirit lives deep in those halls, but your father said you wouldn’t mind.”
I heard Adhanel’s laugh then, faint and echoing. “I don’t mind,” I replied. “One spirit cannot override our need for fresh weapons.”
She nodded, as if she herself was relieved.
The soldiers nodded as we passed them by. I forced myself to interact, to comment as they stripped hide from a seal, or polished a newly-forged sword. Whether or not they wanted to stay and fight, they were making plans in case they had to.
That was not a way to win soldiers over.
At the second fire pit, I found Bardol and Ehledrath. Bardol’s beard had grown long and wild, but Ehledrath looked ever the captain.
“The word came down that you had come back,” Bardol said. He didn’t rise from his seat on one of the ruin stones, but instead nodded at me. He was cleaning seal hide, scraping the blubber off and collecting it in a bucket. “Not all of us were certain you would.”
What did you say to soldiers? Maybe they weren’t so different from the sailors that had been under my command. “My feather bed and giant hearth was comfortable,” I replied. “But alas, I missed your smiling face.”
He snorted. “At least the cold hasn’t dampened your spirits.”
If only he knew.
“How are you feeling?” Ehledrath asked quietly.
“I am well,” I replied. I knew she meant the child. Her eyes darted down to the belly. I stared hard, daring her to make any mention of it. But she did not.
“Lord Baradan is at the southern wall,” she said instead. “Along with Aerik and the elves. They are worried about the spring thaw and its affect on the stone works.”
“Thank you,” I said, and went to them.
They had constructed the southern wall right where the lake and river mouth met. It was tall, thick, and foreboding. Soldiers scrambled over it, checking the connections between the wall and the mountainsides. Several brave souls were in a newly-carved boat, driving wooden piles into the river at the base of the wall. They already had done several layers of gates; now there would be a fifth to stop attackers, if they dared the ice. I couldn’t tell from eyes alone, but the old magic told me the wall was thick and strong, and humans were patrolling on the ramparts. There was a touch of elf magic in it, in the way the stones molded to the mountainsides.
“Eva!” Aerik shouted from high above. I spotted him on the ramparts. He had lost some of his fat in the winter, his face thinner and his hair whiter. Even Firien next to him had seen better days.
“What do you think of it?”Firien called down.
“It’s sturdy,” I replied. But I wasn’t certain it would be enough. Against humans, maybe. But if the Dagnar Queen decided to risk all-out war. “Show me it.”
Aerik came down. There were stairs carved into the wall, and handholds at the right height. “Are you…?” he asked.
“Well enough,” I replied.
He nodded, then did the same for Dalandaras. “Elf. Follow me up, and I’ll show you.”
The humans murmured as we passed. “Lady” and “my lady” and “mistress”. What would father or mother do? I patted shoulders and nodded to each of them as we passed. I noted the cold-burned skin and the cuts and scrapes, and healed them where I could. It was using up the old magic, but I would need these people.
The battlements were wide, the stone and ice roughly hewn. I could hear creaking deep within the wall. Ehledrath was right. There was worry over the spring thaw. Could I spare old magic for this? Or would I have to rely on the elves and what they could strengthen?
“It’s not bad,” I said, which was at least mostly honest. They had shaped the mountainsides as well, chiseling off anything within the wall’s sight that could be climbed up. It would divide any army along both sides of the river, or direct them onto thin ice. Archers would have a prime advantage…if we could bring them this far. If we had to take the fight any farther south than Tal Anor’s river, we would be spreading our troops very thinly.
“We’ve put some pyres along the mountains along the bay,” Aerik said. “Thanks to Firien and Lorandal, if we light one, the others will catch.”
“Like the pyres of Port Darad,” I said.
“It will guide Aerlad to us.”
I nodded. The old magic could not reach far enough to confirm whether Aerlad was sailing up from the south. My own time on the seas told me that, if she had not been detained, she would be arriving soon. It was something I could only hope; there was nothing I could do to hasten the arrival, so there was little point worrying about it.
“Eva,” Fa
ther called, his voice grim.
I spotted him outside the wall, kneeling near the mountainside just where the river started to bend. “What is it?” I called back.
“Best come see,” he replied. “Bring the elves.”
I obeyed, following Aerik and Firien down the stairs hidden in the mountainside. “We’ll carve these away,” Firien explained. “When we need to pull behind the wall. We’ve set stones in the river to impede the boats that can make it this far. Aerik says that your ships have too deep a draft to make it this far anyways.”
I nodded, and made my way over to father. He stood as we approached, and I saw what he had been examining: footprints that had suddenly halted behind a faint cluster of rock, then turned back on themselves.
“Tracks,” Dalandaras said. “Deep, unsteady. No snow shoes.”
“Clumsy,” I added. “Not used to walking in this.”
“Not an elf, then,” Aerik said.
I glanced at my foulings. They bounded off, noses to the white powder, their fur and skin shifting to white.
“Ellsmid must be here already,” Father said.
I nodded. “The only question is, how many did she bring with her?”
Tiri came up behind us. I hadn’t seen her on the wall, but wasn’t surprised she had kept near Father. “She will have brought tenfold our numbers,” the girl answered. “She will want the battle to be quick and decisive.”
“No mercy, then,” I murmured. “And certainly not with the old magic involved.”
“Had you hoped for better?” Dalandaras asked.
“For the men and women in Tal Anor, yes,” I said. “And for what I have to ask them. Get everyone behind the wall.”
“What of your…foulings?” Tiri asked as we walked back.
I nearly grinned. She was concerned about them. “They know their way back.”
We went back over the wall. I felt the hum of elf magic, and then it was as if the stairs hadn’t been there at all.
“Summon everyone to the beach,” I told Tiri. “There is something I need to say to everyone.”
“Even the guards on the walls?” she asked.
“Even them. We are not in danger quite yet.” But tonight, or tomorrow, if the scouts were ahead of the war party.
Tiri did as I asked. I took my time heading back to the camp, letting everyone gather. I could hear the trickle of water from the snow melt, and the slow flow and ebb of the lake as it hit the legs of the low walkways.
Then I felt the foulings’ hackles rise. I smelled fear; coming from two men. They were protected by clanging metal—chainmail—and foreign-smelling furs. The men whimpered as the foulings snapped and circled. The foulings had disarmed them, tossing their swords and daggers aside as if they were thinking creatures who knew what weapons were. My foulings waited for my command.
Ellsmid would show no mercy. What had the scouts seen? I could not take the chance that they had seen anything valuable at all.
“They’re yours,” I whispered, and turned to Dalandaras as the foulings leapt on the men. The only mercy was that foulings didn’t tease their prey before killing them.
Dalandaras wrapped his arms around me. “You feel something,” he murmured.
I nodded, but couldn’t tell him I had just allowed the execution of cowering men. My child survives, I said to myself. She will come out hum—well, as she would were I not the Lady. She will not be part of the sacrifice. You’ve taken enough from me.
The terms are accepted, the Lady replied.
I took a deep, steadying breath, and pulled away from him. “How do I do this?” I murmured as the refugees from Winter’s Crown stopped their tasks and gathered by the bonfires. “How to I ask them to fight and die for me?” I had never seen Mother or Father ask their sailors and soldiers to go into danger. They had earned it over the years, through blood and sweat. I knew my mercs were coming, and I knew they came to me out of that same loyalty. But what was I to these people?
“Tell them why you fight,” Father said.
I turned to him, questioningly.
His dark eyes were both proud and sad. “Tell them why you risk your own life. Tell them the old magic can’t protect you, that it even harms you. Tell them why you’ll be standing out there against the Empire’s army, whether or not they’re beside you.”
At the front of the small crown I saw Bardol and Tiri, and Ehledrath and her two sons, and the tavern maid who now wore chainmail and a sword. I looked at all their faces, my ragtag village. And they looked back at me.
I chose a ruin stone, and stepped up on it.
“You fled Ellsmid,” I said, not even trying to speak loudly. They had all gone silent anyway. “And I promised you passage on ships. Those ships are coming. But the war has come first.
“I don’t fight here because I want this magic. There is power in it, yes. But there is a far greater responsibility. You’ve seen the souls here, the colossi and the undead. They are trapped, unless I can find a way to free them. I could run from this. I could flee south, go back to Port Darad, never see snow again. But I choose not to. I choose not to because, if you subsume yourself into the old magic, you’ll have an army of undead at your back. You saw only a fraction of that power with Adhannor. I saw the pull of that power when Zarah Aros betrayed me. I see the pull in Ellsmid. Someone has to stop her.
“I am asking you to stay and help me defend this place. I can see your faces—you are wondering, why ask the mortals when I have colossi, and undead, and foulings?” I caught Bardol’s eyes, and held them. “I am asking you all because, if I choose to exert full control over them, I will become like Adhannor. The power will corrupt me. I will cease to be human. What care I have for my father…for you all…it would cease. I would destroy the world if I could.
“And if we don’t stop Ellsmid, if we let her have Tal Aesiri, the same will happen to her. And she won’t stop with the northern territories. She won’t stop with Winter’s Crown. She’ll head south, to the borders of the Empire. Then into the Empire, and all the people there.
“If you’re tired of the fight, if you don’t wish to raise a sword against the Empire any further, I understand. But it has to be decided today, now. Will you join me?”
I waited. Breath didn’t come easily. A few men at the back of the crowd stepped back, moving quietly into the ruins.
My heart hadn’t hurt this hard since Mother died.
Then, Bardol knelt. Then Ehledrath. A few more at the back of the crowd stepped away, but everyone else knelt.
Then Bardol stood again. “We will fight for you, Lady Eva.”
“Thank you,” I said, and meant it. There were no cheers. I didn’t want them. “Stand, all of you. There is still a lot of work to do.”
“Then let’s do it,” Father said.
“What do you need?” Bardol asked.
What I needed to do was link the old magic I had weaved from Tal Aesiri to Tal Anor. But Bardol and the humans could do nothing about that. “Ensure that those who wish to leave head west, along the northern shore.”
“They will not be bothered by the Dagnar elves,” Dalandaras added. “If they carry a white flag.”
“Aerlad’s ships will come. They will not abandon anyone who waves a white flag.”
“It’s rather humiliating, to surrender without a fight,” Bardol said.
“I’m afraid they’ll have to do it, if they don’t want the fight,” I replied. “I will need men on the battlements. The north wall should not need many—we’ve taken care of any routes that the elves may take in, and the humans don’t know of them. Still, keep in sight of each other, and frequent breaks to keep awake and fresh. Ellsmid’s scouts have already seen our south wall, so we will need to be extra cautious there.”
“Aye, Lady,” Bardol said, and he and Ehledrath went off to do my bidding.
Still, it wasn’t enough. There were too many mountains and crevices, and though I had foulings and colossi, they too were spread thin. They had not spotted
the scouts, and the scouts had nearly escaped. If I took on the old magic with the blood magic, as Adhannor had, I would have the strength.
If I succumbed as Adhannor had succumbed, I could summon the undead and colossi with barely a flicker of thought. I could do far more than rely on hastily-built walls and cold-worn refugees. But if I did that…I would lose all of me. And my daughter with me.
“There is something I need to do,” I murmured. “Excuse me.”
With a hand I ordered Dalandaras to wait, dared not glance back to see if he followed. I headed to the ward that the colossi had created, that Adhannor had used to mix old magic and blood magic.
But blood magic demanded a sacrifice. I could not give my spirit, could not give my humanity. Would not give it. But it still demanded a life. And on freely given…that was most of all.
I stepped through the ruins and found the circular pit. Cracks ran through the stairs, and the wards that would have surrounded it were lost in crumbled stone. Still, it was enough.
I climbed in. The old magic hummed and circled me. The dry air grew thick, and the hairs on my arms and neck stood on end.
I heard Adhanel’s laughing whisper faint in the air again. Your bargain with the Lady will stand, granddaughter. Best do it while you can.
I yanked off my gloves and let them drop, pushing up my sleeves and drawing my knife.
It was a difficult balance, sacrificing the human life but not the human spirit. The Lady would keep my body alive. I would still be Eva. But there was no going back from this.
I set the blade against my wrist, parallel to the vein for the best cut. If I was deep and true, it wouldn’t take more than a few moments.
A fouling growled, and I was knocked to the stone.
“Eva!” Dalandaras and Father shouted as one.
I lost the knife, somewhere within my cloak and the heft of a fouling body. And I felt the warm, sticky flow of blood over my hands.
I moved the fouling aside. My heart beat quickly, thudding against my ribcage and pulsing like drums in my ears.
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